UiT Alta – Department of Tourism Tourist Motivations & Terrestrial Space Tourism Clément Le Dily Master’s thesis in Tourism Studies…REI-3020…Mai 2020 Table of Content Acknowledgement ...................................................................................................................... 3 Introduction ................................................................................................................................ 5 1- Literature review .................................................................................................................... 8 1.1- Bases of the motivation theory .................................................................................... 9 1.2- Tourism Motivation theories......................................................................................... 10 1.2.1- Motivators and demographics ................................................................................ 10 1.2.2- Push & Pull and escape concept ............................................................................ 12 1.2.3- Educational tourism ............................................................................................... 14 1.2.4- Additional input on motivation theory ................................................................... 15 1.3- Theory related to terrestrial Space tourism and Space tourism .................................... 18 2- Methods ............................................................................................................................ 22 2.1- Methodological Approach ......................................................................................... 22 2.2- Context for theory and Space related tourism ........................................................... 23 2.3- Methods of data collection ........................................................................................ 25 2.4- Measurements ............................................................................................................ 30 3- Results ............................................................................................................................. 36 Discussion ............................................................................................................................... 51 4 - Findings Presentation .......................................................................................................... 51 4.1- Research question and findings summary. .................................................................... 51 4.2- Findings interpretation .................................................................................................. 53 4.2.1- Frequency and gender ............................................................................................ 53 4.2.2 – Interest in Space and Motivation to travel to a Space center ............................... 55 4.2.3- Motivation for Educational tourism ....................................................................... 56 4.2.4- Motivation coming from others ............................................................................. 61 4.2.5- Additional discussion on the findings .................................................................... 62 1 4.3.1- Absence of Findings and potential explanations ................................................... 68 5- Discussing Space related tourism/terrestrial Space tourism ................................................ 71 5-1- Discussing key terms .................................................................................................... 73 5.1.2- Differences between terrestrial Space tourism and Space tourism ....................... 76 6- Implications .......................................................................................................................... 80 7 - Limitations: ......................................................................................................................... 83 8- Conclusion: .......................................................................................................................... 85 References ................................................................................................................................ 87 Appendix .................................................................................................................................. 90 2 Acknowledgement I would like to thank all the terrestrial Space tourism destination that have taken part in the study’s data collection process. On top of that I want to issue a special thank to Anne Mari Norheim, Section leader at Andoya Space Center and the staff of Andoya Space Center, for the effort they freely made, in order to gather a substantial amount of data. The result would not be as significant without their valuable help. I also wish to express how grateful I am for the university of Tromsø, and the tourism department of Alta to allow me to write my thesis on a subject that seemed unrealistic or hard to grasp at first, and difficult to approach considering the lack of academic material concerning terrestrial Space tourism. Lastly, I would like to express my gratitude for my supervisor and Professor Bard Tronvoll, who have followed my work and allowed me a great deal of freedom in both the process of gathering data, and writing the Master thesis. His help, advices, knowledge and mastery in academic writing have greatly facilitated the learning process necessary for me to achieve this Master thesis. Additionally, my appreciation goes to all the teacher at UiT Alta that have given useful and constructive recommendations on this project. Late note: In early 2020 the SARS-CoV-2 virus have had disastrous consequences on the life of a great deal of people. Regarding this study, the pandemic had an impact on the access to any physical literature material, as all physical libraries were locked and closed during the duration of the necessary confinement that followed the outbreak and did not re-opened early enough to help with the writing process. This obviously affected the process of gathering references and previous studies through physical means. Online resource are plenty but books are rarely free or even accessible despite the existence of University VPNs. 3 4 Introduction For centuries, human have been looking up the stars with envy, using their imagination to picture undiscovered places and unattainable reaches. Fifty years ago, the success of the Apollo eleven mission, showed to the entire world a small group of men, landing on the moon, creating dreams for entire generations. This achievement allowed technological progress like never before and had repercussion that shaped the society that we know today. Space has since then opened up, but is still a destination reserved for trained professionals with precise objectives, and it will remain this way for a few years. However, down on earth, the existence of terrestrial Space tourism destinations are giving the possibility for the public to learn and to be entertained with Space related activities, human achievement in Space exploration, and technological advances. Terrestrial Space tourism, or Space related tourism, are not concepts that have been extensively studied by tourism academics. Even less so when paired with a study field like tourist motivation, and that despite the existence of structures like Space Centers, Planetariums, and Observatories. This is where this study comes in, to start filling the research gap concerning terrestrial Space tourism, laying the first stone toward the building of significant understanding of who are the tourists indulging in terrestrial Space tourism, and why they do indulge in it. Since terrestrial Space tourism literature field is a blanc slate, the idea was to attack the subject of terrestrial Space tourism, by starting with one of the first stage of tourism development which is motivation. Some sort of motivation needs to exist before anything else, for someone to actually indulge in any form of tourism. From those two-starting point of terrestrial Space tourism and tourist motivation, was laid out the aim of this study. Therefor this thesis aims to explain the interactions between tourist motivations and their impact on general motivation for terrestrial space tourism. To answer this research question, the focus was laid on a limited set of Space related touristic structure, including Space Centers, Planetariums and Observatories over a period of 6 months. In order to produce valuable results, the selected method was to survey a population sample that had a chance to present some levels of motivation toward Space related topics, in order to 5 understand if such motivation existed and what those motivations could be. Since this kind of approach is new for the terrestrial Space tourism industry, there is an obvious need of groundwork, as the last paper directly treating of terrestrial Space tourism was written 10 years ago. In other words, an important part of this study is to lay down the necessary work for the formulation of an answer to the research question and for further studies to take place. Contrarily to studies and research done regarding actual Space tourism and the Space industry, this research and its finding will not suffer as much from time, as terrestrial Space tourism destinations will not change in the same way the Space industry has in the last decade. A lot of research papers written about Space tourism, ignoring its terrestrial